Bitcoin Ecosystem Tastes Initial Benefit of PayPal’s Bitcoin Support

After the sharp decline of the Bitcoin price in the market on Sept. 18, the Bitcoin communities across the globe finally have the license to celebrate. The Bitcoin price jumped several units well above $400 again, and this has been largely credited to PayPal’s acceptance of Bitcoin transactions on its platform.

Bitcoin enthusiasts closely monitoring the market noticed a significant increase in the Bitcoin price shortly after news broke out that the online payment processor has optimized its system to cater for payments that make use of the digital currency.

The USD Bitcoin Price Index (BPI) on CoinDesk registered a closing price of $435.38 yesterday, rising 9.15% from its previous close of $398.89.

However, Bitcoin’s value traded higher before resting on the $430 mark.

Meanwhile, the CNY BPI also showed an 8.14% increase in the Bitcoin price in correlation with the PayPal announcement. The same scenario also manifested in other Bitcoin exchanges online like Bitstamp, Bitfinex, and OKCoin.

With PayPal’s subsidiary BrainTree already processing Bitcoin payments, the move of the Ebay-owned e-commerce business to follow suit only highlighted the potential of Bitcoin to become a major player in improving the current payment systems driven by legacy methods.

However, unlike BrainTree, the PayPal network has partnered with three Bitcoin payment processors—namely, BitPay, Coinbase, and GoCoin—to enable its clients to receive the digital currencies in exchange for their products.

PayPal’s Scott Ellison, the senior director of competitive intelligence and corporate strategy, was quoted clarifying that PayPal will function as the middleman between the consumers and the merchants, and therefore, the transaction costs will rest in the hands of the payment processors and the merchants.

The Bitcoin price increase likely serves as a sign that Bitcoin is still reactive to market movements; thus, online traders involved in Bitcoin forex and Bitcoin binary options can take advantage of this situation by profiting more from in-the-money contracts.

In addition, Bitcoin gambling aficionados should take this as another avenue for the online gaming industry to evolve as this gives online casino brands a means to accept the digital currency as one of their offered payment methods.

How PayPal’s move will continue to impact the Bitcoin price and the various industries related to Bitcoin and to PayPal like Bitcoin gambling and trading remains to be seen. Nonetheless, it is certain, though, that the Bitcoin ecosystem gladly welcomes PayPal to its network.